ABSTRACT
In February 1961, Amiel Najar met with a Commission official who explicitly informed him that, to the best of his understanding, Israel had no chance of achieving association with the European Economic Community (EEC) because of the political issues involved. Levi Eshkol regarded renouncing the dream of association as a step that would ease the path to reaching an agreement with the EEC. Israel could only achieve customs reductions on a restricted group of products without exposing the EEC to the threat of flooding from other markets. The Europeans could easily market such an agreement to the Arabs, enabling them to highlight their rejection of Israel's request for association. Spain was the largest citrus fruit exporter in Europe and therefore Israel's main competitor. Since the end of the Second World War, the various organs of European integration had boycotted Spain because of Franco's dictatorial regime.
